“Like, I’ve never made anybody work for me at all, I could tell you just that I did, you know, but that was me and I did it for me, for myself, for my habits.”

It was clear Fontaine was caught up in the world of addiction and abuse.

The house where the alleged offences took place was described as a virtual den of iniquity.

Fontaine painted the picture;

“You go there its like you just meet all those really messed up people, its like one stupid thing after another, it’s not a good place to live.”

The dangers inherent with the lifestyle are very real.

It comes from those, “Really messed up people.”

People who would kill you for a $10 drug debt, or stab you for your last piece of rock, or snuff your life out because they were blitzed on booze, drugs or pills or a combination of all the above.

Despite the dangers, women lured into the lifestyle find it extraordinarily difficult to find a way out.

The grip of addiction is a powerful one.

High-Risk Lifestyle

The Manitoba Project Devote team, an integrated RCMP and WPS initiative tasked with investigating unsolved murders of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous women, previously released a detailed list of risk factors that correlate to victimization. Those factors included:

High Risk Lifestyle

Substance Abuse / Addiction

Involvement in Sex Trade

Transient Lifestyle

Hitchhiking

Mental Health Issues

They released this information to raise public awareness, to educate and to inform.

At the time of the release, the RCMP were very much concerned with being accused of victim blaming.